Now it seems that he is adopting the theology of Westboro Baptist Church.

In a recent sermon ‘pastor’ Mark vehemently declared

“Some of you, God hates you. Some of you, God is sick of you. God is frustrated with you. God is wearied by you. God has suffered long enough with you. He doesn’t think you’re cute. He doesn’t think it’s funny. He doesn’t think your excuse is “meritous” [the word he’s looking for here is “meritorious”]. He doesn’t care if you compare yourself to someone worse than you, He hates them too. God hates, right now, personally, objectively hates some of you.”

“God hates, right now, personally, objectively hates some of you”…

There was a video clip of Driscoll spewing the above sewage, but after being posted to the internet and being discussed on sites like The American Jesus or Jesus Needs New PR even Driscoll had the good sense to take the clip off of the Net.

I have neither the time nor the inclination to go into a detailed answer to Driscoll’s myopic understanding of a small mean god whom he has shrunken down to his own angry and vindictive human ideals and ideas. To engage with a pitiful, mean, and punitive version of an angry sky-king that resembles nothing of the Jesus that he apparently follows.

I will merely say this:

When your ‘theology’ closely resembles the bigoted, ridiculous, inbred hatred that is the Westboro Baptist Cult: you have officially lost the plot.

This is not the “Good News” of the gospel. This is the bad news of a small, angry, petty man.

Peter, it’s more likely he’s recycling material he’s been compiling over the last fourteen years. He’s been recycling a lot of material since 2005 but generally it would take ex-members of his church to be able to spot how much recycling has been going on in the last seven years.

Meh, it’s only nuanced in that he’s paraphrasing John Piper, with a few factual errors predictably thrown in (e.g. Origen was a universalist–not an Arminian as the article implies).

The ‘Does God love the non-elect?’ section was a bit much for me. God brings a person into the world to be tortured endlessly as an object of his vindictive hatred, but his love for said person is clearly demonstrated by a brief period of ‘common grace’? That’s like a father torturing his little three-year-old son to death, then arguing at his murder trial that he loved the child because he gave him a lollipop first.

I’m subscribed to Mars Hill’s Youtube channel, so I saw the video before they took it down. I can’t fathom why he thought it was a good idea to tell people that God hates them. Nor can I fathom why he thought it was a good idea to put it on the internet.

But I’m going to challenge you anyway. I don’t think your post was civil. One of the rules that I try to hold to is:

“Never attribute an opinion to your opponent that he himself does not own.”

You are definitely right to call out Mark Driscoll’s false teachings. You are definitely right to let others know about his teachings. You are even right to compare his teachings to that of WBC. But I don’t think you’re right to say that “he is adopting the theology of Westboro Baptist Church.” He definitely would not agree with that statement. This is what their church has to say about WBC:

Of course, you would be free to critique that blog post, or say that he’s not being consistent, or to say that he’s not as different from WBC as he thinks he is. But don’t say that “Mark Driscoll Joins Westboro Baptist Church” unless he actually does.

Pedantically, you are correct: Driscoll has not actually taken out membership at WBC. However, the title of the post is hyperbolic in nature, as a tongue-in-cheek comment on the specific claim. I figure most people have the interpretive categories to understand this.

Yes, I understand perfectly well that you intended the post to be interpreted as hyperbole and not as literal truth. (Are you suggesting that I didn’t understand this?). My point was that it is not civil to mischaracterize someone else’s opinions, even if you’re obviously using hyperbole.

How would you feel if someone hyperbolically misrepresented your beliefs? If you’re okay with it (which, for all I know, you are), then I suppose we’ll just have to disagree about what’s considered civil conversation.

A handful of WBC showed up but none of them stayed for the service and they moved on to protest at a few other spots, apparently. The WBC announcement in advance got more coverage than the protest that transpired.

“Some of you, God hates you. Some of you, God is sick of you. God is frustrated with you. God is wearied by you. God has suffered long enough with you. He doesn’t think you’re cute. He doesn’t think it’s funny.”

So God is essentially Miss Trunchbull from Matilda? *sigh* I’m actually not surprised about this. Westboro’s theology is really just run-of-the-mill Calvinism with a heavy addition of special knowledge regarding who ‘the elect’ are. Most Calvinist churches at least seem to grasp some of the horror of the logical extension of their theology (Calvin himself called it ‘a decree horrible, I confess, and yet true’), and thus try to keep it under wraps. The Westboro folks, by contrast, are happy to throw it in the faces of us, their ‘non-elect’ brethren. It’s disturbing that Driscoll shares this attitude, given the number of his followers, but not surprising.

One of the biggest ironies with Driscoll this year has been his public “wait and see and let’s not denounce anyone too quickly” approach with T. D. Jakes. It’s okay to make fun of effeminate church musicians because the real issue under a lot of issues is supposed to be whether gender is a social construct or not … but let’s not hammer a megachurch pastor who has 30,000 members in his church about the doctrine he teaches because bloggers misrepresent what big church pastors say?

Another irony with Driscoll on Jakes is that back in 2008 Driscoll, in the same sermon where he did his thing with the Targum Neofiti, also ripped into the author of The Shack. I’ve never read The Shack and don’t plan to but if a person is going to rip into someone for teaching a heresy an unknown, self-published author of a NOVEL doesn’t deserve public denunciation or scrutiny as much as, say, the megachurch preacher who inspired Paula White to get into the business … er ministry. But in Driscoll’s lexicon of invective it’s better to denounce novelists and entertainers than megachurch pastors these days.

Except that this year Driscoll also told an interviewer that pastors are talking about sex too much even though Driscoll’s been stirring up sex talk every other year by doing his Song of Songs shtick, possibly just to offend John MacArthur fans. He’s also preparing a book tour to promote the book he and his wife put together called “Real Marriage”. Apparently Driscoll gets to spend three months talking about Song of Songs and “wifely streapteases” AND shill a book on a tour with his wife… but Ed Young Jr. doesn’t get to do a “Seven days of sex” shtick without netting some of Driscoll’s disapproval. Did Driscoll feel like Young stole his gimmick and did a half-assed job by only preaching 5 sermons on sex instead of 11?

This is what happens when people who want to place Jesus in history as a solely loving, nice, hippie Jesus. When faced with the ugly truth that God really and honestly does send people to hell for His glory, they can’t grasp that, because they believe the lie that God will just let anyone and everyone into heaven because He’s just a “nice guy.” God judges sin, He hates sin, He cannot bear sin. Jesus died to abolish sin, in those whom would be saved (whether by free-will arrogance, or by unknown predestinatory bigotry). So the fact does remain, God hates sin, and those who continue in their arrogance and refusing the grace given to them by His very blood and sacrifice. To see God as loving with out wrath and judgment is to see Him as small. To see Him the way Driscoll sees Him is truly to see Him as big.

The God Driscoll worships is a BIG God, and anyone who says otherwise is ignorant of what He truly says about the greatness of God. Many just want to watch the little short snippets and cast judgments on him without knowing him, what he believes, the holistic message of what he teaches and the context in which he teaches it. Some just want to bitch and moan about anything and everything. Get over it. Grow up. Eternity is too important for brothers and sisters to bicker and divide the Church anymore. We need to work toward unity even if we don’t agree.

“The God Driscoll worships is a BIG God, and anyone who says otherwise is ignorant of what He truly says about the greatness of God”.

Who’s “He” in this sentence? Driscoll? Point for clarification.

You’re not seriously attempting to suggest that the only people who take issue with Driscoll’s theology and pastoral approach are liberals, are you? John MacArthur doesn’t really qualify as a liberal of any sort.

Well, Shootemup, you certainly have the demeaning and self-assured rhetoric down pat, i.e. if I just say it in the most confident and deriding manner then it *has* to be true.

However, you clearly misunderstand theological speculation, and gross theological speculation at that, as some sort of ‘knowledge’ or ‘fact’. Knowledge puffs up, but theological speculation mistaken for knowledge puffs up into a smug prick. There are none so blind that arrogantly assume that they know the mind of god exactly like their own.

Eternity is too important for brothers and sisters to bicker while you bicker? From that brilliance you are going to tell people to grow up? Sheesh…

For what it’s worth: Driscoll’s god is extremely small, and narrow, and vindictive, and mean; and I’m not sure you would recognize what a big God looked like even if he clothed himself in flesh and some people wrote gospels about it.

What you need more than anything is some humility: go look in a mirror and say one thousand times, “I am not God.” Followed by, “I have never seen heaven or hell, and I have no physical proof they exist. When it comes to ‘judgement’ the creator of heaven and earth will do the right thing because he is good. I am not God. I should not talk like I am an arrogant expert.”